Bread Matters: Of Loaves and Stamps

This article addresses two Anatolian Hieroglyphic (AH) signs of writing that are attested as determinatives of words belonging to the realm of bread baking. One of these signs, *291, is only attested twice, once as a determinative, and once as a phonetic sign with the value /li/. As a determinative, the sign *291 still awaits elucidation.1 The second sign of writing, *402, has been long known as a semantogram, SCUTELLA, in- terpreted as a tray or platter, with a phonetic value /sa/, understood to derive acrophoni- cally from the depiction of a seal. It will be argued in the following that the traditional interpretation of this sign’s semantographic value is incompatible with its phonetic value, and a re-interpretation will be offered which integrates both sign values. To provide added background to the proposed new reading, a cultural practice related to bread baking will be discussed.